the world sighs, he breathes
by renee walker
Summary: It goes like this: Gale inhales, Johanna exhales, and life goes on.-Gale & Johanna friendship.


It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Gale Hawthorne sits stiffly in his chair, listening to people drone on about _building the new world_ without actually coming to the point of _how_ they're supposed to build a new world.

He contemplates when they'll finally be released for lunch. It's already one in the afternoon, and he wants to go out and eat something other than the grey slush served in the barely-built office building.

Across the table, Johanna Mason slouches low. Her eyes are turned up to the ceiling, her lips set into a scowl. She looks like she wants to rip someone's throat out.

Honestly, Gale can relate.

"Okay," Jo snaps suddenly. "What is the _fucking_ point of this meeting?"

The man speaking, a Peacekeeper who was part of the Rebellion, stops abruptly. He's tall and broad-shouldered, obviously packed with muscle, and Gale knows he doesn't stand a chance against an angry Johanna Mason.

"We're-"

"Doing shit for all," Jo says aggressively. "Yeah, new world, fucking _fantastic_ , how about we come up with an actual plan to make that new world happen? Think about that during lunch, meet back in an hour. I'm _done_." She says it likes she means it, like she's going to leave and never return.

Johanna doesn't say anything else. Just gets up, grabbing her coat from the back of her chair, and stomps out.

There's a moment of silence, where everyone is simultaneously surprised and unsurprised. Then Gale gets up, gathers his own coat, and leaves after Johanna.

When he comes back an hour later, he runs into her. He takes the sketchy elevator going up, but Johanna appears from the other end of the hallway, where the stairs are. They eye each other warily, both with coffees in hand.

"Ladies first," she says mockingly, tipping her head towards the meeting room door in invitation.

Once upon a time that might have riled Gale up or made him volley a sharp retort in return. Now he sighs, because this is his _life_ and he's accepted that he's always going to be around feisty, sassy women. He goes in first.

Everyone else is already there, murmuring to each other as Gale and Johanna take their seats.

The ex-Peacekeeper from before stands up again, clearing his throat purposefully. "We've divided the plan into three parts," he begins, and Gale settles back to listen.

Across the table, Johanna Mason slouches low. Her eyes are sharp and fierce as she watches the occupants of the table carefully.

There are dark circles under her eyes that match Gale's.

* * *

Johanna and Gale are neighbours entirely by accident.

Gale isn't even supposed to be in his apartment, requested a unit a few floors up, but someone else moved into the unit he wanted and management is a tired, soft mother with a newborn baby, so he took the new apartment without complaint.

He doesn't sleep well, is the thing, remembers fire and little sisters and the bleakness of District 13 and the way shrill screams hung in the air. He stays awake too long, is the other thing, drinking shitty coffee after shitty coffee, and poring over plans to rebuild the districts except they're _building_ , creating something new, better, and isn't this what he fought for.

He remembers how angry he felt before, injustice smacking him in the face, making one decision that led to another one that led to losing Prim, that led to losing Katniss.

One night, Gale passes out on his couch from too little sleep and too little coffee, and wakes up to someone screaming. His hand is on his bow before his eyes are fully open, scrambling for the compact, militarized weapon, and unfolding it fully. He grabs his arrows-slim, metal, lethal things with dangerous tips-and sets out through the hall.

He opens his door, hears something, and barely dodges a knife. He recognizes Johanna only when they're bow-to-axe with each other, caught in mid-strike poses.

Gale can't hear his heartbeat, only the screaming, and it's like fighting in the Career Districts and Capitol all over again.

"Fuck," Johanna curses, stepping away, and going around him.

"Who's screaming?" Gale hisses, following her warily as she picks up her knife.

"How the hell should I know," Johanna snarls back, not quietly at all. A few people are coming out of their apartments, eyeing the two cautiously, peering around for the cause of screaming, and generally looking grim and terrified.

"Come on," says Johanna, and he follows her up the stairs. There are people huddled outside a second floor apartment, looking anxious and talking amongst each other. The lack of imminent danger and people holding weaponry makes Gale relax a fraction.

Gale sighs, and asks, loudly and firmly, "What's the problem? Who's in there?"

"There's a little boy," a girl, maybe 15, says. "Nobody's attacking, just something's wrong."

They look at her but she doesn't elaborate on _what's wrong_. Johanna scowls, marches up the door, and knocks sharply on it. The screaming continues. No one answers.

Johanna keeps knocking, a steadily increasing pounding where the screaming is accompanies by intervals of crying, and where Gale develops a headache. He's about to rip Johanna away when the door swings open.

It's a man, young, younger than Gale, and looking apologetic and weary. "I'm so sorry," he says, voice hoarse, "I just. He's crying, I don't know what to do, I can't bring him back to reality."

Gale steps forward, says, "Can I see him?"

 _Him_ turns out to be a boy around 5 years old. His eyes are closed, glassy, he's screaming at the top of his lungs, and there are tear tracks down his face.

"He was, he saw people die in front of him, saw them bleed, saw, saw things that kids shouldn't see," the man says, soft and low. "He couldn't find me or anyone, I think, I couldn't find him for sure. I, he's-"

Gale moves forwards, drops to his knees beside the little boy's bed, and says, "I'm sorry," real soft, and the words are loud through the screams. Says, "You're going to be okay, you're alive, you're so young," and thinks _too young_ , and of Prim being called up at the 74th Games, of holding on to his own siblings tightly.

Gale sits on the his bed, slowly pulls him onto his lap, and talks to him about District 12 food in a low, confident, soothing voice he used to talk to Katniss and his mom in when they were panicked.

The kid calms down after a while, looking up at Gale, feels softer and warmer being held by this stranger, this dark-haired man with warm palms and cold fingers, who says _you're safe right now_.

Gale leaves the room, nods at Johanna and the man, and walks out before anyone can say anything to him.

Johanna catches up with him on the flight of stairs going down, and, briefly, her shoulder presses against his, warm and solid. She doesn't say anything, so Gale bumps her back, and lets himself into his apartment unit.

* * *

Gale comes out of a meeting at almost midnight about plans for the new law enforcement, military, weapons, and has a headache bigger than Panem. He scowls and raises eyebrows at people who even bother to look his way, and Lilith, a District 3 weapons designer whose father was from the Capitol, claps him on the shoulder.

"You look like Johanna at five in the morning," she remarks, cheerful, and Gale snorts.

"Should I ask how you know this?" he says, half-sincere, and half-intrigued.

Lilith grins at him, all teeth. Her hair has gone white from stress, but she's only in her late twenties. "You want some help managing all the plans, or, like, getting a new attitude?" She claps him on the shoulder again, gentler this time.

Gale says, "No, I've got it." He means _there's nothing I can do for you, I can't take your help, I won't_ , and Lilith's eyes are soft when she squeezes his shoulder.

"Well, I could use some help," she tells him. "I'm getting old, you know."

He frowns. "It's okay," he tries to say, only half-heartedly trying for polite, and Lilith sighs, slapping him over the head.

"You, me, and Johanna will be meeting at six in the morning tomorrow. Don't be late. This isn't all about you, you know." Gale feels guilt twist up in his stomach, remembers the bomb, remembers the dead, and Lilith presses a kiss to the side of his head before going off somewhere.

Gale slinks into the night to walk home. Not ten minutes later, he encounters Johanna standing a block from their apartment building, looking down at the large dog sitting by her feet.

"Having a nice staring contest?" Gale calls, and Johanna doesn't flinch, but he sees her go stiff, and then sees her middle finger flipping him off.

"You're lucky I didn't stab you," she snaps, a wild smirk curling her mouth when he's a foot away from her. Her eyes glitter in the street lights. She looks terrifying. She looks exactly like a Victor who played the entire arena.

Gale says, "I know," and realizes he doesn't really care if he gets stabbed or not.

Johanna rolls her eyes like she knows what he's thinking. She gestures to the dog. "This ass keeps following me around. He's like, Haymitch following Effie around when he's drunk and doesn't know what to do."

"Haymitch and Effie are dating now," Gale says, looking at the dog. The dog is big, with fluffy blond fur. He reaches down to pat the dog, and it pants, a black tongue lolling out of it's mouth.

He thinks of the mutts in Katniss' first Games, but this dog looks nothing like them. Friendlier, maybe. Gale wonders if the dog is a _he_ or a _she_.

"You going to keep it?" he asks, rising again.

Johanna raises a brow at him, shaking her head. "Like I have time for this dog. I had more time before the fucking Rebellion."

"Yeah, I'm sure you were really fulfilling your life," Gale deadpans, because he knows she wasn't, and Johanna glares.

"I'll stab you," she says, and he knows she won't. Knows how she hesitates with a blade these days, doesn't like to kill, but he knows if she needs to, she will, he saw it in the apartment building when the 5 year-old was screaming, and that's a reassuring thought that lifts some weight off his chest.

"You can threaten me later," Gale tells her, shaking his head. "What are you going to do with the dog?"

Johanna lifts a shoulder. She's already turning away, done with the conversation. "I don't want the fucker. You can have it."

Gale stays where he is. The dog follows Johanna, who stops and a quarter turn to glare down at it.

"Stay," she growls. The dog grins up at her.

Gale laughs at her, and ignores the glare she levels at him too. He laughs again when she tries walking away, again, and the dog continues to follow her.

"Shut the fuck up," Johanna says to him, and then says to the dog, "fucking _stay_."

"He doesn't want to stay," Gale points out, "he wants to be with you."

Johanna looks at him. " _He_ might be a _female_ ," she drawls, sneering. "And I don't want he, or she, or whatever this fucking _dog_ identifies to be, to come home with me."

"You shouldn't leave it out here though," Gale says. He moves forwards, checks the dog for tags. There's one that says _all shots received_. Whoever owned this dog had been well off enough to take care of them, and either couldn't anymore, or was dead.

Johanna says, "I shouldn't have killed those people either, but life isn't always about _should_ or _shouldn't_ , sorry to break it to you." She doesn't sound sorry, and Gale rises, glaring.

"Yeah, thanks for the memo," he says, sarcastic and biting, and she bares her teeth like Enobaria. "This isn't a person against you in a life or death scenario who you _had to_ kill to survive, this is a dog who's had their shots and probably wants somewhere safe to be."

"You identify with a dog, what does this say about you," Johanna bites out, and then smirks. "I can think of a few things."

"I can think of how you identify with a dog too," Gale says, and thinks _bitch_. He thinks how he hasn't actually fought with someone over something as trivial as this a dog since before the Rebellion.

To his surprise, Johanna flings her head back and laughs. "These days," she grins, "I'm the boss bitch around here."

Gale snorts. "A bossy bitch, maybe."

"Take the dog," Johanna tells him, shaking her head once, "take it home with you, I'm not taking care of it. That's me bossing you around." Gale hooks his fingers around the dog's collar, lets Johanna walk away, and the dog whines.

"It's okay, man," he tells it, smoothing a hand over it's fluffy fur. The dog relaxes. Gale relaxes. "It'll be okay."

Gale walks over to the bare-bones, newly-built grocery store at four in the morning, the earliest it opens. Greg, the man running the store, looks up blearily and nods at him.

Gale picks out some suitable food and sanitary products, all for the dog, basing his product choices on the advice his insomniac neighbour who owns a small puppy himself.

He gets back, walks and feeds the dog, and tries out names. By now, he's figured out that the dog is a _she_ , and he names her Mint. She seems to like it.

He resists the urge to try the names _Catnip_ , _Johanna_ , and _Lilith_ on Mint. The latter two humans would most likely punch him in the face, and maybe even take away his dog.

It's only about an hour after he's done attending to Mint that there's a knock on his door. Gale rolls his eyes. He tells himself that no, he can't just ignore the door, someone would break it down, and hauls himself up from where he was looking over some legal documents and absentmindedly petting Mint.

Lilith, of course, is on the other side of the door, with a scowling Johanna is pressed to her shoulder. Lilith is wearing slacks. Johanna is wearing a shirt with a stretched out neck, and a thick lumberjack jacket.

"Why," Gale says flatly. "I don't need help."

"Hanna told me you got a dog. You're going to need help when you're juggling so many responsibilities."

In District 12, he had to take care of his family, take care of Katniss and her family, work at the mines, hunt, and sell his game. In the Rebellion, he had helped with weapons manufacturing, planning attacks, training for the front lines, had to worry about his family and Katniss and her family, and.

Gale says, "It's actually not that bad," and Lilith tells him, "Because you _just got_ the dog."

"Look, Hawthorne, Lils isn't gonna let up until you let her help," Johanna says. It sounds like she's speaking from experience. Gale grins at her expense, mouth open in a silent laugh, and Johanna flips him off, leaning against the doorframe.

If anything, the dark circles under her eyes look _worse_.

"Just fuck off," Gale says, stubborn. He doesn't want, doesn't need, this, okay, he's fine.

Lilith says, "Come on," and, "you can bring your dog." Her voice is lower, now, and her eyes watch Johanna. Gale takes in Johanna's tired slump, the way Lilith lifts a hand to rub at her temple like she has a headache.

He says, "Take care of yourselves," like he would with his mom and siblings - fond, gentle, desperate - and surprises himself too.

"Hey, look, you have feelings," Johanna drawls, smirking.

Gale ends up gathering his paperwork, shoving them carelessly into his bag, and ushers Mint out the door. It's not hard, because Mint goes right to Johanna.

It's worth giving in to see how she grudgingly reacts to Mint's inane fondness of her the entire way to the office.

"My sister wanted a cat," Jo says, in the quiet of the elevator. "I got her a kitten." She doesn't say anything else.

Gale nods at her, and presses a grounding hand to her back, briefly, when they go into the empty meeting room.

* * *

That night, there's a knock on his door, and a Johanna Mason standing just outside it. She's wearing colour, a stretched-out light green pullover, and is barefoot.

"Wanna have dinner?" she asks, kind of awkwardly, and Gale says, "you can cook?"

Johanna raises an eyebrow. "Hey, fuck you too, _yes_. I've been alive longer than you have, shut the fuck up and just get your ass over to my apartment. Bring the fuzzy nightmare, if you want."

She disappears across the hall, and Gale gathers his things, gathers his dog, and follows shortly after. _Why not_ , he thinks, carrying some soup over too. It's his mother's recipe, and he'll be damned if he lets Johanna show him up by feeding him without Gale contributing to the meal in some way.

"Soup," Johanna says, eyeing him as she locks the door behind them.

Gale smirks, "You ever tasted Seam soup?" and then tells her, "You sounded like Greasy Sae when you said _I've been alive longer than you have_."

"She sounds wiser than you," Johanna snarks. "Tell me about her, and maybe make your ass productive too." Gale prepares the meat while Johanna throws together vegetables, tells her about the market and how he traded his game for other food. He talks to her about Greasy Sae being tough, but fair.

"Like a weird grandmother," Gale muses.

"Lilith once told me about how her dad knew this eccentric old cat lady," Johanna says, "and you know she's _eccentric_ because a Capitolite described another Capitolite as _weird as fuck_ , but she sounds kind of like Greasy Sae."

"She's not anything like Capitol people," Gale says.

Johanna lifts a brow. "You ever seen escorts try and act like your fucking parent? Like, no, Maleficent, I won't fucking go to bed at ten, I'm a grown-ass woman."

" _Maleficent_ ," Gale mutters. Capitol names were still ridiculous. How does someone even spell that? "Was there anyone like Greasy Sae in 7?" and that sets the ball rolling for random stories they pull out of their asses.

By the time they're eating, Johanna's deep into a story about Annie and Finnick.

"I'm doing shots with all the outer district Victors," she's saying, "becaues they likes being stupidly drunk, what a bunch of disasters, and I see _Finnick_ , and he's more drugged than Haymitch was wasted. I was asking him _who did this to you_ , and I was drunk but I knew he was worse off. He didn't really respond, but I got him into my car and we were driving and he was like _I miss Annie_. And just, God, they are, fuck, were inseparable. He was drugged, and had probably been prostituted that night, and was barely standing, and all he could think of was the love of his life." She cringes at the misuse of present tense, takes a poker face through the rest of the story, and Gale understands too much.

"How's Annie doing now?" he asks. He had only met her once or twice in District 13, but she had seemed soft-spoken and sweet. He knew she had a child, a young boy, can see a picture of the kid and Annie in Johanna's spare living room.

Johanna shrugs. "She's, good. Healing, her and Finn. They've got a house by the ocean, you know, and she takes him out fishing. Finnick taught her before he died." The way she says it is so clinical, but so raw. It's like she's regurgitating information that she drilled into herself, and it makes Gale both empathetic and uncomfortable. Johanna catches his eye, and says, "How's Katniss?"

"Settling in District 12, last I heard," Gale says, his heart seizing up. There's a familiar ache in his chest. "Moved in with Peeta. Haven't heard from her in a while."

Johanna nods at him, lets him breathe. They don't really talk throughout the rest of dinner, which is actually pretty good, but they talk about work in the living room, and sip black coffee. Gale goes back to his apartment, brings his work over, and they both work on different things side by side.

Mint falls asleep by Johanna's feet. Gale passes out on the couch very late, and wakes up too early.

Johanna stumbles out of her bedroom, cursing, and flings the door open.

"Fuck off," she says, and walks away. Gale peers at the door with bleary eyes. Lilith waves at him.

"Good morning, Gale," she says, smiling, and Gale glares.

"Mornin'," he says, voice rough, and gets up. His joints crack, bones creaking, when he stretches. Mint stretches too, growing low in his chest.

Johanna walks past him, in grey sweatpants and a leather jacket. Drawls, "Better oil those joints, old man."

Gale asks, "What happened to all that shit about you being alive far longer than I have?"

"Hanna," Lilith says, exasperated, at the door. Johanna snorts, flips them both off, and presses a coffee mug into Gale's hands.

"Take this, get the fuck out, I'll see you in an hour, okay?"

"It's-"

"Take the damn coffee, Hawthorne, I'm eating the rest of your soup for supper."

That's how Gale ends up stumbling out of Johanna's apartment, not at too early an hour but too exhausted to speak, and glaring only because Johanna roughly shoves him.

"Fuck you," he says.

Johanna says, "Sorry, I'm ace," and smiles, predatory. Gale blinks at her, barely comprehending the words, and Lilith sighs.

"He's too sleep-deprived for this, Hanna," Lilith tells her.

"It's okay," Gale says, "I'm fine."

"You're a liar. Get another hour of sleep, idiot," Johanna says. She squeezes his shoulder, a bit roughly, as Gale opens his own apartment door and she's passing by. Lilith presses a hand to his back, grounding, and he remembers doing this to his mom, ushering her out the door, and to Johanna, ushering her into the meeting room.

* * *

They gradually become closer friends after that, circling each other. Gale falls in platonic love with them both, and he watches Lils and Jo, as he's nicknamed them, fall in romantic love with each other as a few months turn into a year, and the ruins of District 2 become more alive.

"The thing is," Jo's telling him, bitching and scowling, "I don't mind people looking at my body, you know? Like, yes, I know I'm attractive. I know you find me sexy. I just don't want to ever have sex. They just don't understand it when I say to fuck off alone." She throws back a shot, vodka, and says, "Do you understand me, pretty boy? You've got more cougars looking at you than the combined amount of strange men Lilith and I have looking at us."

Gale laughs at her. "Well," he says, "had a few dames back in Twelve," because old-fashioned Seam speak always made Jo cackle.

"You sound like such a shithead," Jo tells him. The bartender,, their friend Nolan, brings over a drink someone ordered for her. Jo pushes it away without even looking at it-she only drinks things from people she trusts-and continues, "You are such a shithead. You and your _dames_ , you sure you liked Katniss?"

"Loved her," Gale admits, and it's easier, now, to say things like that. "You sure you like Lils?"

"Shut up," Jo says.

He raises his brows, clicks his tongue. "You _really_ like her." It's not like it's not common knowledge, by now. Lils and Jo, they sleep in the same apartment. They have a pet cat. They wear each others clothes, honestly, and they invite Gale over for dinner weekly. Gale's neither stupid or _blind_ , he can see how his best friends are basically a couple without acknowledging their relationship _as a couple_.

"Let it go," Jo tells him, narrowing her eyes at him. "I will cut you in your sleep, let it go."

"No," Gale says, "you guys need to acknowledge your feelings like actual _adults_ , and figure out your relationship."

"We're," she begins, then stops. Gale and Jo made an unofficial promise not to lie to each other when they began telling each other the raw truth of their past and current lives a year ago. Gale watches that unofficial promise burning Jo's mouth, and knows he trusts her to tell him something real. "I do like her."

"Yeah, I know," Gale says. "I like her too. She watches Mint."

Jo flips him off. "We're taking a shot every time you mention your dog, you're like an old cat lady except with dogs and you're male." She throws back another vodka shot. He does too, feels the burn all the way down.

"I have one dog."

"You treat her like she's your baby."

Gale thinks of his siblings, of Prim. Thinks of the 5 year-old boy who lives in the floor above him, his name turned out to be Thorn, Gale watches him when his father is away, sometimes. "I don't think you actually know how to handle a kid," he says to Jo, smirking.

Jo says, "I had a family too, you know, and Finn fucking _loves_ me. More than you." Gale rolls his eyes. Of course Finn loves Jo more. She visits him and Annie every second month, while Gale has only met him once. "And, you know, Lils is really good with kids."

He looks at her pointedly. Jo scowls, carefully avoids his gaze.

"She's just really stunning," Jo smiles, small and genuine. Fragile would never be the word to describe Jo, but she sounds as soft as she can get. Her face is lit up by the bar lights, blue and purple and white, unnatural colours gliding along the sharp lines over her cheekbones and nose and lips.

Gale thinks she looks beautiful. Thinks Lils feels the exact same way about Jo.

He remembers another girl, long braids and eyes like storms and fierce like him, and he lets her wander into the forest.

"How you doing?" Johanna asks him, careful, watching. She's got his back, he knows. Maybe the war is over. Maybe he's settled into District 2. Maybe he has a stable income and food source.

It's still nice.

"I'm good," Gale tells her, "don't worry about me."

Jo snorts. Says, "Like you could survive without me and Lils," and offers Gale another shot.

The world sighs; he breathes.

* * *

 **diclaimer:** i don't own _the hunger games_ trilogy or anything about it.

this fic was inspired by _Feel What It's Like To Be New_ by electrumqueen on ao3.

written for: c/p's _wreck yo' self_ (level: i'm dying) and _first sentence prompts_ challenges.


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